FAYETTE COUNTY, Ga. — To make the perfect recipe takes the right ingredients. Shellane Brown bakes and brews with family in mind. She moved from Lithonia to Fayetteville to find success in the baking business. She now co-owns Woodstone Bakery in the Town at Trilith in Fayetteville. Brown signed a lease in 2019 before any major development ever happened at Trilith.
"I'm kind of reliving childhood memories along with baking with my mom and my sister and aunts and uncles," Brown said. "It's really a town that's surrounded by the film industry. So when the strike happened, we definitely felt a hit. But we persevered, and we had the support of our community."
Trilith Studios will turn ten years old this weekend. It opened working on the Marvel film Antman. It has produced many more Marvel movies and other popular films and television shows. The studios survived a pandemic, rising interest rates, a near industrywide strike and an actual writer's strike.
Originally called Pinewood Atlanta Studios, Trilith was drawn to the area by Georgia's 2008 film tax credit. That same tax credit, which has come under fire in the General Assembly this year, has drawn several other entertainment studios to Metro Atlanta.
Rob Parker is the president and CEO of Town at Trilith, the live, work and play development that grew around the studios. He said plans ultimately call for 4,000 people to live at Trilith in multifamily and single-housing homes, along with tiny homes and canopy homes. There's also a hotel on site, as well as office space, retail and restaurants.
"This has become the town center for South Metro," Parker said. "In ten years, this has grown from our first film in Antman to the largest studio in North America and one of the largest in the world. People feel like the film industry was an overnight success here. It has been 20 or 30 years in the works, as Atlanta has become a media hub. You can see things as challenges or you can turn those into opportunities. I think what we’ve experienced in the last ten years, each time those obstacles have come up, they’ve been spun on their head and turned into opportunities.”
Parker said 85% of the workers at Trilith are from Georgia. The studios feature state-of-the-art sound stages and include vendors on-site. New businesses continue to pop up around the studios from week to week. Parker said he and others work to keep the community engaged as the town grows and makes its next moves.
Tela Kayne just opened up a bookstore called Scholar and Scribe six months ago. The Peachtree City native dabbled in film for a time, but she said she ultimately returned to Fayette County to become part of a tight-knit, family-oriented community.
"They’ve really been focused on ensuring there’s synergy with community building and growth in an industry," Kayne said. “Continuing to embrace the people who are here in support of it and recognizing that the community is so passionate about storytelling and creativity.”
The Town at Trilith faced criticism last year over a racial discrimination lawsuit that remains unresolved at last check.
While there have been some growing pains in major development taking over once untamed farmland, the next chapter in Trilith's ten-year tale includes a new entertainment complex called Trilith Live and the nearby U.S. Soccer Federation's new headquarters. For Brown, all the newness reassures her that her community is growing and sustaining her baking dreams.
“Being a town of creatives and storytellers, that’s what my husband and I consider ourselves to be," Brown said. "It just felt like home when we heard the story. We're very thankful this dream of mine actually happened."